After the night of Puyang's (濮陽) fire, Cao Cao returned to his Yanzhou main camp and cut his long beard shorter by a hand's span. The night before, a grain of beard concealed within a palm had deceived Lü Bu's eye. This morning, Cao Cao moved that same grain of beard into another tool of another plan.

Cao Cao called his counselors together and set out his plan. "Last night my beard saved me. This morning it shall catch Lü Bu. Let the rumor run that 'Cao Cao has burned to death in last night's fire.' When that rumor reaches Lü Bu's ear, he will ride with light cavalry to strike our main camp. At that moment, my beard shall come out again from the midst of a hidden ambush and meet Lü Bu face to face."

Liu Ye (劉曄) bowed deeply. "The Lord's beard was his first plan, and is now his second. A single beard pierces the fate of two men together." Xun Yu, standing to one side, inclined his head but added no line. Behind Liu Ye's elegant compliment lay the harder truth that every counselor of Cao Cao was by now learning: the beard of a master is only one of the many instruments by which a master bends reality. For this particular master, the list of instruments was already long — a warm cup, a posting's line, a red thread in a chest pocket, a handful of ashes at Xingyang — and every new stratagem had to be tried against the grain of all the older ones. A counselor who forgot that tally would soon lose his seat to a counselor who did not.

Cao Cao's rumor crossed toward Puyang. Everywhere men began to say: "Cao Cao burned to death in last night's fire." Wine-sellers and grain-carters, children and old women, traveling monks and border scouts — every kind of voice that walked the roads this week carried the single phrase back and forth. Within two or three days, the rumor arrived bearing the weight of truth. In Lü Bu's main camp, Chen Gong raised a low line of warning. "My Lord. The rumor runs too fast. The grain of it is suspect." Yet Lü Bu's two eyes were already wet with the fire of the rumor. "If Cao Cao has burned to death, his main camp too must lie master-less. Let us strike it with light cavalry."

Chen Gong sighed. Lü Bu led five thousand light cavalry and rode toward Cao Cao's main camp.

The gate of the main camp stood empty. Lü Bu rode in at full momentum. In that instant, drums sounded on all sides. An ambush of the same manner as last night's fire at Puyang lay, this morning, inside Cao Cao's main camp. A grain of beard moved in the opposite direction.

Cao Cao stepped out from behind a pillar of the main camp. The beard beneath his chin had been shortened by a hand's span. He looked up at Lü Bu on the horse and laughed low. "Fengxian. Last night your two eyes failed to read my beard; this morning your two ears failed to read the rumor of it. A single grain of beard has deceived, at one stroke, your two eyes and your two ears together."

Lü Bu's face darkened. He raised the Sky-Piercing Halberd and charged Cao Cao. Yet the armored soldiers of the ambush surrounded Lü Bu's light cavalry on every side. Dian Wei and Xu Chu (許褚) stepped forward and blocked the halberd's tip. Lü Bu bit his teeth and turned his horse. Of the five thousand light cavalry, two thousand remained in the camp, and the rest fled back toward Puyang.

Cao Cao laughed aloud. He smoothed his own beard with one hand. "Tomorrow your Sky-Piercing Halberd shall turn back once more in front of my beard."

Chen Gong, who had argued against the raid that morning, rode at the rear of Lü Bu's retreating column. Twice he had foreseen, quietly, what would happen; twice his foresight had failed to move the grain of his master's will. A counselor whose master cannot be moved twice learns, in time, that the counselor must move himself. Chen Gong did not speak that thought aloud that morning. Yet the thought had already set its root beside his saddle.

Behind both camps, the people of Puyang, the people of Yanzhou, the farmers of the river flats — all went through ordinary motions this morning. They gathered wood, they drew water, they sent out their dogs. Above them, the rumor of a burnt general and the counter-rumor of a living one turned like two winds over the rice fields. Whether the grain of their rice would, in a season, be eaten in one camp or the other depended upon the grain of one man's beard. Such is the way the small carry the weight of the large upon shoulders that never see the large's face.

The seventeenth morning of Book 2 deepened, quietly, behind the pillar of Cao Cao's main camp. The three characters Iljagye (一髭計, the plan of one beard) were planted as a seed: the breath on which a single beard pierced, at a stroke, the fate of two men together. The concealment within a palm of Day 46's Bogyanghwa had crossed, this morning, into the inside of another fire — a fire of rumor.

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